The Forever War Read online

  “At any rate, all personnel will be required to be in their shells with no more than ten minutes’ notice. When we get within a thousand million kilometers of the enemy, you are to stand by your shells. By the time we are within five hundred million kilometers, you will be in them, and all shell compounds flooded and pressurized. We cannot wait for anyone.

  “That’s all I have to say. Sub-major?”

  “I’ll speak to my people later, Commodore. Thank you.”

  “Dismissed.” And none of this “fuck you, sir” nonsense. The navy thought that was just a little beneath their dignity. We stood at attention—all except Stott—until he had left the room. Then some other swabbie said “dismissed” again, and we left.

  My squad had clean-up detail, so I told everybody who was to do what, put Tate in charge, and left. Went up to the NCO room for some company and maybe some information.

  There wasn’t much happening but idle speculation, so I took Rogers and went off to bed. Marygay had disappeared again, hopefully trying to wheedle something out of Singhe.

  Eighteen

  We had our promised get-together with the sub-major the next morning, when he more or less repeated what the Commodore had said, in infantry terms and in his staccato monotone. He emphasized the fact that all we knew about the Tauran ground forces was that if their naval capability was improved, it was likely they would be able to handle us better than last time.

  But that brings up an interesting point. Eight months or nine years before, we’d had a tremendous advantage: they had seemed not quite to understand what was going on. As belligerent as they had been in space, we’d expected them to be real Huns on the ground. Instead, they practically lined themselves up for slaughter. One escaped and presumably described the idea of old-fashioned infighting to his fellows.

  But that, of course, didn’t mean that the word had necessarily gotten to this particular bunch, the Taurans guarding Yod-4. The only way we know of to communicate faster than the speed of light is to physically carry a message through successive collapsar jumps. And there was no way of telling how many jumps there were between Yod-4 and the Tauran home base—so these might be just as passive as the last bunch, or might have been practicing infantry tactics for most of a decade. We would find out when we got there.

  The armorer and I were helping my squad pull maintenance on their fighting suits when we passed the thousand million kilometer mark and had to go up to the shells.

  We had about five hours to kill before we had to get into our cocoons. I played a game of chess with Rabi and lost. Then Rogers led the platoon in some vigorous calisthenics, probably for no other reason than to get their minds off the prospect of having to lie half-crushed in the shells for at least four hours. The longest we’d gone before was half that.

  Ten minutes before the five hundred million kilometer mark, we squad leaders took over and supervised buttoning everybody up. In eight minutes we were zipped and flooded and at the mercy of—or safe in the arms of—the logistic computer.

  While I was lying there being squeezed, a silly thought took hold of my brain and went round and round like a charge in a superconductor: according to military formalism, the conduct of war divides neatly into two categories, tactics and logistics. Logistics has to do with moving troops and feeding them and just about everything except the actual fighting, which is tactics. And now we’re fighting, but we don’t have a tactical computer to guide us through attack and defense, just a huge, superefficient pacifistic cybernetic grocery clerk of a logistic, mark that word, logistic computer.

  The other side of my brain, perhaps not quite as pinched, would argue that it doesn’t matter what name you give to a computer, it’s a pile of memory crystals, logic banks, nuts and bolts…If you program it to be Ghengis Khan, it is a tactical computer, even if its usual function is to monitor the stock market or control sewage conversion.

  But the other voice was obdurate and said by that kind of reasoning, a man is only a hank of hair and a piece of bone and some stringy meat; and no matter what kind of a man he is, if you teach him well, you can take a Zen monk and turn him into a slavering bloodthirsty warrior.

  Then what the hell are you, we, am I, answered the other side. A peace-loving, vacuum-welding specialist cum physics teacher snatched up by the Elite Conscription Act and reprogrammed to be a killing machine. You, I have killed and liked it.

  But that was hypnotism, motivational conditioning, I argued back at myself. They don’t do that anymore. And the only reason, I said, they don’t do it is that they think you’ll kill better without it. That’s logic.

  Speaking of logic, the original question was, why do they send a logistic computer to do a man’s job? Or something like that…and we were off again.

  The light blinked green and I chinned the switch automatically. The pressure was down to 1.3 before I realized that it meant we were alive, we had won the first skirmish.

  I was only partly right.

  Nineteen

  I was belting on my tunic when my ring tingled and I held it up to listen. It was Rogers.

  “Mandella, go check squad bay 3. Something went wrong; Dalton had to depressurize it from Control.”

  Bay 3—that was Marygay’s squad! I rushed down the corridor in bare feet and got there just as they opened the door from inside the pressure chamber and began straggling out.

  The first out was Bergman. I grabbed his arm. “What the hell is going on, Bergman?”

  “Huh?” He peered at me, still dazed, as everyone is when they come out of the chamber. “Oh, s’you. Mandella. I dunno. Whad’ya mean?”

  I squinted in through the door, still holding on to him. “You were late, man, you depressurized late. What happened?”

  He shook his head, trying to clear it. “Late? Whad’ late. Uh, how late?”

  I looked at my watch for the first time. “Not too—” Jesus Christ. “Uh, we zipped in at 05:20, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah, I think that’s it.”

  Still no Marygay among the dim figures picking their way through the ranked couches and jumbled tubing. “Um, you were only a couple of minutes late…but we were only supposed to be under for four hours, maybe less. It’s 10:50.”

  “Um.” He shook his head again. I let go of him and stood back to let Stiller and Demy through the door.

  “Everybody’s late, then,” Bergman said. “So we aren’t in any trouble.”

  “Uh—” Non sequiturs. “Right, right—Hey, Stiller! You seen—”

  From inside: “Medic! MEDIC!”

  Somebody who wasn’t Marygay was coming out. I pushed her roughly out of my way and dove through the door, landed on somebody else and clambered over to where Struve, Marygay’s assistant, was standing over a pod and talking very loud and fast into his ring.

  “—and blood God yes we need—”

  It was Marygay still lying in her suit she was

  “—got the word from Dalton—”

  covered every square inch of her with a uniform bright sheen of blood

  “—when she didn’t come out—”

  it started as an angry welt up by her collarbone and was just a welt as it traveled between her breasts until it passed the sternum’s support

  “—I came over and popped the—”

  and opened up into a cut that got deeper as it ran down over her belly and where it stopped

  “—yeah, she’s still—”

  a few centimeters above the pubis a membraned loop of gut was protruding…

  “—Okay, left hip. Mandella—”

  She was still alive, her heart palpitating, but her blood-streaked head lolled limply, eyes rolled back to white slits, bubbles of red froth appearing and popping at the corner of her mouth each time she exhaled shallowly.

  “—tattooed on her left hip. Mandella! Snap out of it! Reach under her and find out what her blood—”

  “TYPE O RH NEGATIVE GOD damn…it. Sorry—Oh negative.” Hadn’t I seen that tattoo ten thousand
times?

  Struve passed this information on and I suddenly remembered the first-aid kit on my belt, snapped it off and fumbled through it.

  Stop the bleeding—protect the wound—treat for shock, that’s what the book said. Forgot one, forgot one…clear air passages.

  She was breathing, if that’s what they meant. How do you stop the bleeding or protect the wound with one measly pressure bandage when the wound is nearly a meter long? Treat for shock, that I could do. I fished out the green ampoule, laid it against her arm and pushed the button. Then I laid the sterile side of the bandage gently on top of the exposed intestine and passed the elastic strip under the small of her back, adjusted it for nearly zero tension and fastened it.

  “Anything else you can do?” Struve asked. I stood back and felt helpless. “I don’t know. Can you think of anything?”

  “I’m no more of a medic than you are.” Looking up at the door, he kneaded a fist, biceps straining. “Where the hell are they? You have morph-plex in that kit?”

  “Yeah, but somebody told me not to use it for internal—”

  “William?”

  Her eyes were open and she was trying to lift her head. I rushed over and held her. “It’ll be all right, Marygay. The medic’s coming.”

  “What…all right? I’m thirsty. Water.”

  “No, honey, you can’t have any water. Not for a while, anyhow.” Not if she was headed for surgery.

  “Why is all the blood?” she said in a small voice. Her head rolled back. “Been a bad girl.”

  “It must have been the suit,” I said rapidly. “Remember earlier, the creases?”

  She shook her head. “Suit?” She turned suddenly paler and retched weakly. “Water…William, please.”

  Authoritative voice behind me: “Get a sponge or a cloth soaked in water.” I looked around and saw Doc Wilson with two stretcher bearers.

  “First half-liter femoral,” he said to no one in particular as he carefully peeked under the pressure bandage. “Follow that relief tube down a couple of meters and pinch it off. Find out if she’s passed any blood.”

  One of the medics ran a ten-centimeter needle into Marygay’s thigh and started giving her whole blood from a plastic bag.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Doc Wilson said tiredly. “Business is booming. What’d you say about the suit?”

  “She had two minor injuries before. Suit doesn’t fit quite right, creases up under pressure.”

  He nodded absently, checking her blood pressure. “You, anybody, give—” Somebody handed him a paper towel dripping water. “Uh, give her any medication?”

  “One ampoule of No-shock.”

  He wadded the paper towel up loosely and put it in Marygay’s hand. “What’s her name?” I told him.

  “Marygay, we can’t give you a drink of water but you can suck on this. Now I’m going to shine a bright light in your eye.” While he was looking through her pupil with a metal tube, he said, “Temperature?” and one of the medics read a number from a digital readout box and withdrew a probe. “Passed blood?”

  “Yes. Some.”

  He put his hand lightly on the pressure bandage. “Marygay, can you roll over a little on your right side?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, and put her elbow down for leverage. “No,” she said and started crying.

  “Now, now,” he said absently and pushed up on her hip just enough to be able to see her back. “Only the one wound,” he muttered. “Hell of a lot of blood.”

  He pressed the side of his ring twice and shook it by his ear. “Anybody up in the shop?”

  “Harrison, unless he’s on a call.”

  A woman walked up, and at first I didn’t recognize her, pale and disheveled, bloodstained tunic. It was Estelle Harmony.

  Doc Wilson looked up. “Any new customers, Doctor Harmony?”

  “No,” she said dully. “The maintenance man was a double traumatic amputation. Only lived a few minutes. We’re keeping him running for transplants.”

  “All those others?”

  “Explosive decompression.” She sniffed. “Anything I can do here?”

  “Yeah, just a minute.” He tried his ring again. “God damn it. You don’t know where Harrison is?”

  “No…well, maybe, he might be in Surgery B if there was trouble with the cadaver maintenance. Think I set it up all right, though.”

  “Yeah, well, hell you know how…”

  “Mark!” said the medic with the blood bag.

  “One more half-liter femoral,” Doc Wilson said. “Estelle, you mind taking over for one of the medics here, prepare this gal for surgery?”

  “No, keep me busy.”

  “Good—Hopkins, go up to the shop and bring down a roller and a liter, uh, two liters isotonic fluorocarb with the primary spectrum. If they’re Merck they’ll say ‘abdominal spectrum.’” He found a part of his sleeve with no blood on it and wiped his forehead. “If you find Harrison, send him over to surgery A and have him set up the anesthetic sequence for abdominal.”

  “And bring her up to A?”

  “Right. If you can’t find Harrison, get somebody”—he stabbed a finger in my direction—“this guy, to roll the patient up to A; you run ahead and start the sequence.”

  He picked up his bag and looked through it. “We could start the sequence here,” he muttered. “But hell, not with paramethadone—Marygay? How do you feel?”

  She was still crying. “I’m…hurt.”

  “I know,” he said gently. He thought for a second and said to Estelle, “No way to tell really how much blood she lost. She may have been passing it under pressure. Also there’s some pooling in the abdominal cavity. Since she’s still alive I don’t think she could’ve bled under pressure for very long. Hope no brain damage yet.”

  He touched the digital readout attached to Marygay’s arm. “Monitor the blood pressure, and if you think it’s indicated, give her five cc’s vasoconstrictor. I’ve gotta go scrub down.”

  He closed his bag. “You have any vasoconstrictor besides the pneumatic ampoule?”

  Estelle checked her own bag. “No, just the emergency pneumatic…uh…yes, I’ve got controlled dosage on the ’dilator, though.”

  “Okay, if you have to use the ’constrictor and her pressure goes up too fast—”

  “I’ll give her vasodilator two cc’s at a time.”

  “Check. Hell of a way to run things, but…well. If you’re not too tired, I’d like you to stand by me upstairs.”

  “Sure.” Doc Wilson nodded and left.

  Estelle began sponging Marygay’s belly with isopropyl alcohol. It smelled cold and clean. “Somebody gave her No-shock?”

  “Yes,” I said, “about ten minutes ago.”

  “Ah. That’s why the Doc was worried—no, you did the right thing. But No-shock’s got some vasoconstrictor. Five cc’s more might run up an overdose.” She continued silently scrubbing, her eyes coming up every few seconds to check the blood pressure monitor.

  “William?” It was the first time she’d shown any sign of knowing me. “This wom—uh, Marygay, she’s your lover? Your regular lover?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She’s very pretty.” A remarkable observation, her body torn and caked with crusting blood, her face smeared where I had tried to wipe away the tears. I suppose a doctor or a woman or a lover can look beneath that and see beauty.

  “Yes, she is.” She had stopped crying and had her eyes squeezed shut, sucking the last bit of moisture from the paper wad.

  “Can she have some more water?”

  “Okay, same as before. Not too much.”

  I went out to the locker alcove and into the head for a paper towel. Now that the fumes from the pressurizing fluid had cleared, I could smell the air. It smelled wrong. Light machine oil and burnt metal, like the smell of a metal-working shop. I wondered whether they had overloaded the airco. That had happened once before, after the first time we’d used the acceleration chambers.

 
Marygay took the water without opening her eyes.

  “Do you plan to stay together when you get back to Earth?”

  “Probably,” I said. “If we get back to Earth. Still one more battle.”

  “There won’t be any more battles,” she said flatly. “You mean you haven’t heard?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you know the ship was hit?”

  “Hit!” Then how could any of us be alive?

  “That’s right.” She went back to her scrubbing. “Four squad bays. Also the armor bay. There isn’t a fighting suit left on the ship…and we can’t fight in our underwear.”

  “What—squad bays, what happened to the people?”

  “No survivors.”

  Thirty people. “Who was it?”

  “All of the third platoon. First squad of the second platoon.”

  Al-Sadat, Busia, Maxwell, Negulesco. “My God.”

  “Thirty deaders, and they don’t have the slightest notion of what caused it. Don’t know but that it may happen again any minute.”

  “It wasn’t a drone?”

  “No, we got all of their drones. Got the enemy vessel, too. Nothing showed up on any of the sensors, just blam! and a third of the ship was torn to hell. We were lucky it wasn’t the drive or the life support system.” I was hardly hearing her. Penworth, LaBatt, Smithers. Christine and Frida. All dead. I was numb.

  She took a blade-type razor and a tube of gel out of her bag. “Be a gentleman and look the other way,” she said. “Oh, here.” She soaked a square of gauze in alcohol and handed it to me. “Be useful. Do her face.”

  I started and, without opening her eyes, Marygay said, “That feels good. What are you doing?”

  “Being a gentleman. And useful, too—”

  “All personnel, attention, all personnel.” There wasn’t a squawk-box in the pressure chamber, but I could hear it clearly through the door to the locker alcove. “All personnel echelon 6 and above, unless directly involved in medical or maintenance emergencies, report immediately to the assembly area.”